for more than just strength
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Months after fighting Kenshin, Soujirou goes back to place he first met Shishio.


**fandom: Rurouni Kenshin  
title: for more than just strength.  
pairing: none  
rating: pg-13  
Description – Months after fighting Kenshin, Soujirou goes back to place he first met Shishio.**

**Disclaimer – Rurouni Kenshin doesn't belong to me. I really love the characters enough to make this though.**

**for more than just strength.**

**By Miyamoto Yui**

_There was no point to come here._

His geta pressed lightly into the mud left from the fresh rain. Only the smell of seasalt spread into the air, now that he recognized the smell of the sea once he'd left this place.

No one had bothered to rebuild it. Like Shishio's body, it was half-burnt, so black and half eaten, yet the shape was left intact enough to be recognizable for what it used to be.

After the child left with a trail of dead bodies behind, no one touched the cursed lot. The storehouse was rotting away with a dank smell of ashes that never wanted to leave its wooden body.

The darkness was calming enough in its eeriness. If he had to see this under the sunlight, he didn't know what he would have done. Latent emotions were slowly rising and crashing inside of him, wanting to pound like the ocean waves in the emptiness inside his chest. Soon, he was coolly calm again.

As far as he had known, he couldn't remember another place he called 'the house' though they had said he was born somewhere else, and they were keeping him only out of pity.

_Pity meant to manipulate someone's feelings for their own comfort. _

It was their favorite word to play around with, especially when he smiled back at them placidly.

He inaudibly made his way to the veranda of the house and slipped inside easily, knowing every crack because of the multiple times he'd tried to run away from those people. Now, the boards creaked slightly under his feet.

"I'm a little heavier now," he chuckled to himself.

He got to his room and the small straw chest was still there. It wasn't worthy to be in the storage room because they said there was nothing valuable there, but when he opened it, pulling the two pieces of wood into connecting parts of a jigsaw puzzle, he knelt before it. He blew on his dusty hands and reached inside for the red undergarments and a single, light-green children's kimono.

**Wear those clothes instead. Put that away. Don't ever show up in this trash ever again.**

But when he looked at it, it was well-done. The quality was not so bad, but he blinked at it. Sadness of having to give it up or happiness at finding it in one piece all these years did not show on his face.

_I wonder, is this what sentimentality is?_

Then, he noticed something heavy inside the old kimono. He put his hand through and felt through the sleeve with his fingers. Finding something, he pulled it out and felt the circular surface in between his fingertips, but it was attached to an even deeper pocket. Turning the material inside out, he pulled out his sword and cut a small hole, and then he placed the sword back into the scabbard before kneeling again on the tatami.

A bracelet fell onto the straw ground with a small piece of old, yellowed paper next to it.

He unfolded it and read the thin, yet determined strokes:

**Sou – The center, your heart**

**Ji – afterwards**

**Rou – that you grow to be a fine man.**

**This is what I name you, my little one.**

It was then that he realized why he had chosen to throw the blue kimono and wear a dark green after he'd left Shishio. He smiled to himself and it felt like a small warm glow of warmth entered his body. It was strange yet refreshing.

His body covered the small, transparent beads of the bracelet as he bent his head down, closing his eyes. The wind blew through the house, but he felt as if someone's hand was caressing the top of his head.

Like the way Shishio used to whenever he completed an important task…

After he had fought with Kenshin, he'd wandered for months, trying to undo some of the things he'd learned all his life. His body was still numb, but there was a crack in his mind, breaking down and splitting his skull apart. He was in the forest for sometime sobbing or screaming and then one day, he walked out. He wandered to all the places Shishio had brought him to until he came back to the first one: The House.

_There was always someone protecting me._

When the authorities almost found him, a woman in an alleyway covered him and shook her head; when some of Shishio's followers almost caught him, a dream told him that he had to leave the forest.

And even now.

"**YOU! We'll sell you off tomorrow. There's no use for you here."**

When he held the bracelet up to his face, he felt small chips of a bead fall. He remembered where the small cracks had come from.

"You will be fine now."

He opened his eyes to the voice, but there was no one there. He got up with the bracelet in his hand, not wanting to slip it into his wrist yet as he felt the smooth beads in between his fingers. Pulling his hat over his head, he walked out.

_I will accept that this is as far as they could understand…_

…_and at this time, this is all I can understand about all that has happened._

_The answer, however, isn't in anger, guilt, love, affection, or what is said to be right or wrong. _

_It is from years and years of finally facing the wall that I built for myself: You aren't allowed to be at peace or to have happiness for all you've done._

He stopped for a moment, but didn't turn around, lest his heart turn back to stone once more. Then, he grinned widely.

"Bye-bye."

Some of the anger he'd held all these years slipped away like the wax of a lit candle. The residue would of course remain, but it would never be whole again.

He walked onward.

_I lived because I'd been given a body, but I just waited until someone was stronger than me to protect or kill me. I never thought of choosing anything for myself. The one time I did, I killed all of them with my small hands and I cried in the rain regretting from that very moment that I'd never be able to go back to being 'unaware of my darkness' for the rest of my life._

As he walked to the river to wash his face, he remembered Kenshin's hands and the force of his attack: **The reason we are strong is because there is weakness. But strength doesn't mean survival or that you are the best, it means that you can overcome the weaknesses that eat you from the inside.**

**The ones that try to invade your mind and erase your emotions with apathy.**

_I didn't believe him when he forced that into my body when he defeated me._

"To stop from feeling to the center of yourself," he mumbled to himself as he looked up to the sky with only the stars blinking above and the rushing river flowing around his feet.

_I won't ever be ashamed of who I am because I met you Shishio-sama. You taught me that single thing that Kenshin-dono also possessed and is living out:_

_Conviction._

Soujirou stood up because he knew he couldn't sleep. There were many things he wanted to learn to feel. Though his face was calm, he could feel excited at fighting something for more than just 'strength'.

When he put his hand up to his chest, he felt his own heartbeat. Without warning, the tears came out of his eyes before he realized what was happening.

"It's still there."

**Owari./The End.**

**Author's note:** Yay! I got this in before the New Year.

Words cannot express how much I love Soujirou Seta. I must confess that if I never came across him, I would never had found peace in my life.

The reason I loved him was that he wasn't perfect. He wasn't even the gentleman, but he was strong and smiling through anything…I loved him because I had found someone that I could connect to.

Now, 13 years later, I am more in love with this character and was able to find the answer I couldn't figure out when I first saw him in RK.

I could keep gushing on and on about my love for Souji, but I hope that in this small piece, it could soothe your heart as it did mine when I writing it. I feel like a deep sense of happiness from just doing this…

Thank you for reading and for your support.

Love always,

Yui

12/31/2012 10:57:33 PM


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